The Pummeled Heart, Finding Peace through Pain

From an early age I was taught that there was a God and a universe of sainted people in a place called heaven--and I became fascinated with the idea that I was linked to an extraordinary, unseen world. I read the lives of the saints and the mystics. I think I had one foot in this world and one in the next. . . I wanted to do more for God, to be noble in suffering like the saints and martyrs. As the years went by I came to realize that I was on a crucial search. Was there a God? Was there a point to this life? For the saints and mystics, this life seemed a "vale of tears," and a cross to be borne. The message I read from the saints was uncompromising. The way to heaven is rough and rocky. We have to earn that high place by more than the sweat of our brow. While I was young and untested, I had no problem with this. I loved the romanticism of suffering for the love of God.

But as life went on real pain set in. I had to face my mother's nervous breakdowns, a psychologically impaired husband, a failed marriage, the responsibility of raising and supporting seven children, and the fatal illness of a brother. My romanticism about pain suffered out of love for God disappeared. I wanted some answers. I didn't like the hard path. I screamed at times: Why? Why me again? What do you want of me anyway? I struggled with resentment as I hung on to the Lord and called this faith. My acceptance of God's mysterious ways of sending us pain and discomfort was a happy choice. Yet, as my faith foundation become firm, I learned that I hadn't "made it." In fact, as the blows kept coming (and some were so hard I sometimes felt like Job reincarnated), I often tried to console myself philosophically. But then I faced new traumas that had me asking God again: What is it you're asking of me? Where are you taking me? When is enough enough?

In one year's time I had blows that were a kind of spiritual endurance contest. My oldest son experienced cranial pressure that forced a blood vessel to burst in the retina of his left eye, leaving him blind in that eye with the risk of the same thing happening to his remaining eye. Two of my grandchildren were in a near fatal auto crash. My son Sterling suffered three heart attacks. And Peter, the child I called the light of my life, left this world at age 27.

At 17 Peter was hit with one of those mentally destroying maladies called "bipolar affective disorders." A doctor said his illness was permanent and he would spend most of his life hospitalized. But with good medical care, determination and prayer, he got on with his life, finishing college with honors, teaching school, and even writing books. But he didn't heal; he suffered with increasing pain from being, in his words, "incomplete....My life is like a Rolls Royce without spark plugs. It looks great, but it has a hidden flaw," he said in a farewell tape, addressing his "Dear Family" with sadness. We didn't know how despairing life had become for Peter. In March, 1991, he walked to a pond near our home, and put a bullet through his head. At first I thought I would die, too. I never believed I could survive the death of one of my children. I would lie in bed at night and my body would take over, with what felt like labor pains. Somewhere I found strength, I believe from all the prayers that others were saying. There were the unexplainable ways that Peter stayed in touch with me. I knew he was happy and I began to find peace.

Then two years later came the horrifying news that my son, John, and his wife, Nancy, had been murdered in their bed in their Montana home. How could there be such evil in the world? How could two fine people be blown away by an intruder invading the sanctity of their home!

Suicide brings unbelievable pain. It is almost unbearable. You cannot dismiss the thought that maybe it could have been prevented. Yet, with suicide, there is the reality of choice, someone in a desperate condition chooses to end the pain. So it has a kind of closure to it that keeps it a private and very personal act. If the survivors can accept that, they can come to peace.

Murder is different. Murder shatters the peace of one's life. Murder is the entrance of the worst evil imaginable into your home, into the safe places of your life, forever blasting any illusions you might have had that good can protect you from evil. Evil is real, never again can I question its power.

On the Sunday after I got that news, I was asking God for understanding even as I thanked God for the temporary gift of my two sons. I felt myself struck, and I heard the words, "They are a permanent gift." I was being corrected. I found myself smiling and I was soaring because I could smile. I learned then that while I felt defeated by life, my faith would come to my assistance. I was reminded that along with the blows, there are also joys. My grandchildren survived, my son is doing well, my mother is walking again. Peter's books were published posthumously, his legacy to us and to others.

That was a time for reflecting on how life is full of the bad and the good, the trials and the triumphs. It was a period plunging me into the paradox all Christians face. Jesus said, "Unless the seed dies, there can be no new life." He said the starting point is the destruction of the encasement that keeps our potential locked in the container of self. How else can selfishness die but through having it beaten out of us so that our hearts can soften enough to feel compassion and love for others. How many stories I could tell of people who have walked head-on into their pain. They let "the seed die" so they could have the "new life." They could have ostracized their pain, hardened themselves, shut God out, and let their lives turn into hell. They knew that if we will not enter into our pain, we will never learn that the path to joy is through pain. If we can commit the symbolic act of dying to ourselves, we become free, and we can then blossom, bonded in love to others and to God.

The times when I have been closest to God are the times when I have been immersed in the gloom. It is then that my heart, pummeled in pain, softens--and I am lost in the Mystery that torments and consoles at once. My question, "How do I find peace from my pain?" can only be answered by walking into the grief, accepting the Mystery. I do not know what God still has in store for me. I do know with unshakable faith that pain is not impotent. For God gets closer--blow by blow--and mysteriously yet truly, these blows are really God's wake up calls--fitting us for eternity.

I was told over and over that the suffering I endured was God's will. I truly believe that the people who told me to carry my cross with dignity and faith were being honest. There was truth in what they advised for we need setbacks, loneliness and loss to lead us out of our self-centeredness that blocks us from extending our hand to God. Yet, for most of us, getting to the point of such advice is a journey couched in mystery. This is not surprising because these insights are incomplete. They tell us what to endure but they don't tell us why. Why does pain have to be the path to God? Pummeled people need words with substance, assurance that we can cement the pieces of our lives together, and without bitterness try to regain wholeness once more. Rather than "carry your cross," wouldn't it be better to hear "love your life because it came from God," and trust you're made of the right stuff to get through the pain.

In the musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar," Jesus poignantly confronts his Father saying, "Show me there's a reason for your wanting me to die. You're far too keen on where and how and not so hot on why..." That seems to be our fate, not understanding why we have to bend to the blows. I don't think we're ever going to really know why there's so much suffering individually and in the world. Theologians have spent centuries trying to explain the problem of evil and still the answers remain elusive.

John Steinbeck wrote, "Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory." How does one get to that "greatness?" I don't think it comes from trying to conform to simplistic advice like "carry your cross." That doesn't work. We are complex human beings and we need to find help that nourishes in all areas. When the blows come the often denied truth is that we are angry. If we don't acknowledge that anger, it goes underground, settling inside, becoming depression. It is not the grief, the death, but the internal anger-reaction that causes a person to become depressed. The trauma of depression is devastating. Friends tell you to look up and see the sun and the trees. They don't know that for you there is no sun, there are no trees. The depressed person is, like Dante's Prince of Darkness, encased in ice, in hell. When the reaction to the blows of life is depression, it is difficult to melt the ice and go on with life. But it can be done, and once you are in the light again, life takes on a beauty you couldn't have imagined before.

Our experiences may shake us to our very roots, forcing us to ask some basic questions. Examining our lives, our values, our faith from the perspective of nothing making any sense reveals God's creative powers and helps us hold to that faith. I have been able to hold onto my faith, knowing that God will be revealed to me when I need it most.

When I think of the many times I dealt with pain and tragedy, I am conscious that from those shocks I learned how to discern what is really important. I have learned that only life and death are important, that pain is an activator. Because of it I have grown as a person. I learned it is not enough to passively carry a cross; you must pick it up, fight with it, deal with its weight, and, finally, love it.

Pain comes in more forms than we can imagine, in more intensity than we can explain. Sometimes it is unbearable because we can't get beyond it, to see its purpose. Few of us have not had to wrestle with the question of why. Why suffering, why tragedy, why injustice, why the death of the young, why the silence of God? When it comes to trying to understand our own painful experiences or those of others, there aren't any satisfactory explanations.

Sr. Joan Duls, writing of her own personal pain, says, "All of life is a letting go, a rehearsal for the final performance. We die many times over, through loss and disappointment. The promise of resurrection is vague...but we learn that new life issues from darkness." The mystery remains that we have sorrow so we can understand joy; failure so we can know success; pain, so we can relish pleasure. Somehow, built into the mystery of this duality is a blueprint for growth that has the potential for shaping us into who God wants us to be.

Life makes sense, but not until we free ourselves from an immobility that prevents us from soaring out of the depths and into new life. In order to make sense of our lives, to come to peace with our pain, each of us must surrender to a symbolic death. We can fly only after the cocoon has broken. The Spirit fills us, gives us a love-power to connect with every other being in joy and peace. This new life comes only after destruction of the old, and the shattering can break us as well as make us. If we accept that suffering has an important role, then we can accept it and even see the beauty in it.

To begin the healing process, we each have to find our way of going beyond our limits. We need to take responsibility for our lives and not fall back on easy excuses, stay out of the traps, be convinced that there is a God who loves us and listens to us, believe in our own power, be convinced of our self-worth, have a sense of humor, have good motivational patterns. You have to be convinced of your own self-worth. Most importantly, you have to believe that it is up to you to create your own personal definition of success. You have to be able to recognize your personal achievements. This takes courage and I think courage is what is needed most if we are to grow strong at the broken places.

The wonderful thing is that we are never alone in our pain. We have so many models to study, to pray to, to emulate. One of mine was the Jesuit priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins endured the agonies of despair so powerfully expressed in his poems. They are the cry for God's hand with Hopkins's hand raised high in waiting. Only one who has deep and true faith can utter that cry. Hopkins' dying words were, "I am so happy, so happy." I wanted to understand how someone who had been pummeled so severely by external and internal pains could reach that point of happiness. And one day it became clear that it was the pummeling that had cleared away the debris causing his pain. And so, the man who had been given such extraordinary eyes to see that "The world is charged with the grandeur of God" could soar home joyfully.

I didn't ask for my heart to be pummeled by life. I doubt if anyone would ask for this. Even Jesus asked to have the chalice of pain taken away. That's the human way. But God's way is different; it's the way of mystery. It has to be that way because of what's involved here, inviting us finite creatures to be one with the infinite. Somehow we don't automatically accept this invitation. We're too limited, too content with small, comfort-laden goals, with the here-and-now, with things we can touch and feel. But all the while there is a mystery to be penetrated and a Source who wants us to opt for a permanent home. Enter the chaos, the disruption, the ways by which God disturbs us so as to shake sense into us. This is necessary. As the Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, expressed it, "All suffering prepares the soul for vision." When the vision intensifies and we begin to see what we were born for, then like a song from our pummeled but now open and peaceful hearts comes the aria: Thanks be to God.

Acknowledgment

Stauros is grateful to Antoinette Bosco and to Twenty-Third Publications for permission to print edited and condensed selections from The Pummeled Heart, Finding Peace through Pain, 1994, Antoinette Bosco, (paper, $7.95), published by Twenty-Third Publications, P.O. Box 180, 185 Willow St., Mystic, CT 06355. 1-800-321-0411.

CLick here to read a Response to this Article by Rev. Nancy J. Lane, Ph.D.